I've always wondered -- if I used this on the board room window to listen into public company earnings meetings, is that inside information? Technically, the information is "public" in that anyone could do what I'm doing...
Along similar lines, I've wondered about how often restaurant and bar owners have bugged their own premises.
There's probably a lot of valuable information discussed in such establishments.. especially, say, around Wall St.
Regarding the legal aspects, I'm not sure how much of a legal expectation of privacy one has in a "public" place such as a restaurant or bar, and we've pretty much already accepted ubiquitous video surveillance in such places (even if such videos are often without sound).
Someone could potentially infer speech just by lipreading soundless videos, but if someone did decide to use audio surveillance on their own property in a bar, restaurant, or other place of business, is there any law against that?
Quite apart from the legal and ethical objections that might arise against doing this, I'm sure some business owners are not above giving in to the temptation to spy on their patrons, especially if there's a big profit motive (like getting access to inside information by spying on Wall St execs gossiping over drinks or dinner).
That's not to mention dirt that might be revealed in conversations considered to be "private", which could be used to blackmail people or for other nefarious purposes.
The technology to perform such spying has been around for a long time, and in a bar or restaurant the owner (or rogue employee, or customer even) wouldn't have to resort to exotic techniques such as this light bulb trick. A simple microphone would suffice.
> Along similar lines, I've wondered about how often restaurant and bar owners have bugged their own premises.
In a few select Houston strip clubs.. all the time, or at least ten years ago some did, the ones owned by certain organizations. I haven’t been around that scene for a decade, so I can’t speak to now. I know of a few other places that seemed to magically never have trouble with city officials or permitting. Another such place, an after hours club, was frequented by the mayor’s “party-oriented” daughter, never had trouble with police raids, or fire marshals. The venue survived unscathed until the next mayor took over and such leverage became unavailable. The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission was the only real challenge, but often the local cops would be knowledgeable about pending raids and would graciously provide some advance notice. It certainly helped that many of those cops were paid as off duty private security by the venue. DEA was another frequent adversary, but those folks aren’t as undercover as they thought they were. I might suggest that the DEA was (or maybe still is,) one of the more sketchy law enforcement agencies in the government.
Just under the surface of “normal,” there is some really fascinating stuff that goes on.
Some Dunkin Donuts stores in the New England area were (decades ago) accused of listening to their customers by having microphones at seats where customers ate. Not sure if that was intentional or part of their security system as they claimed. [0]
I'm sure that one way or the other, that question has been dealt with exhaustively. My guess, the information you obtain is considered definitely not public, even though it's possible for a member of the public to obtain.
